Objection in the comments of popular science media and lack of communicative experience: Problem statement

Problem statement

Contemporary digital technologies turned the communication into a complex and multifunctional type of human activity which produced the necessity to master certain knowledge (technological, first of all), abilities and skills by the representatives of various social groups. The problem of communicative competences is actively discussed, the very notion is constantly specified which is explained by various approaches and the search for the most universal criteria for determination and typology of communicative competences. Studying the phenomenon of communication, psychologist A. A. Bodalev defines the communicative competence as “the ability to establish effective contacts with other people and to support them possessing enough knowledge and skills” [Bodalev 1995]. The researchers point at the dependence of communicative competence on the level of developed abilities and skills to effectively and suitably communicate, on the correct use of cultural. Language, speech norms, understanding the background of a certain communicative situations which demands the communicative experience.

In light of the above, it becomes obvious that it is necessary to describe typical scenarios of objections in the absence of communication experience or in the context of insufficient communication experience. The authors aim to identify the communication scenarios followed by objectors who lack sufficient competence, and to explain the principles of their objections.

Issue history

The contemporary philosophy tells about the solid connection between communication and cognition. The latter is understood as the setting for rational cognition of reality which gained a foothold in the philosophy of New age (Descartes, Foucault, Bacon, Kant etc.) and became the spine cord of the social and cultural paradigm “Moderne Projekt” (J. Habermas’s term). The logical result of this ideological development was the detachment of communicative experience as a single aspect of human experience, without which the cognition is impossible. McLuhan told that communicative technologies are the constructive principle of all variants of human world perception and life organization in the society. In this case the communication is understood as the process of interaction, interchange between people. A. A. Leontyev links the notion of communication with the process of informational change between people in the contemporary reality [Leontyev 1997: 85]. Then we acknowledge valid the postulate that everything natural in this world changes the information (messages), and everything existing is nothing else than the combination of informational flows [Kuznetsov 2011: 83–84].

It is necessary to note that the very notion of experience has no undisputable meaning in philosophy and “relates to the least clear notions we possess however paradoxically it sounds” [Gadamer 1988: 409]. Also the understanding of experience as a philosophical notion greatly depended on the time and the supreme direction of thought as well as on a certain teaching it related to [Gorelov, Gorelova 2015]. But the common things are such features of experience as 1) its correlation to the human nature, 2) generalization which lies in the foundation of its forming, 3) relativity to the past. Thus, the past is understood as ‘the starting point of human comprehension for all the events happening in the present”, and the experience may be understood as “the temporary modus of the past”, “total horizon”, which helps “distinguishing everything a human deals with” [Kuznetsov 2011: 85]. This experience is born in the process of multiple human interactions with the surrounding environment and is embodied in the language (comp. “language as the house of existence” [Heiddeger 2007]). This very experience lies in the foundation of psychoanalysis when the verbal interaction with a patient becomes the way of emotional experience, and in this case the task for a psychoanalyst is to involve him in the same “language game” (as Wittgenstein understands it), linguistic means turn into the tool of calling for life here and now for the happening event of human psychological structure change [Lacan 1995]. Also, the contemporary studies notice that Internet environment greatly demonstrates the prior position of the communicative experience in the life of a contemporary person. M. M. Kuznetsov notices the ambivalence of nature of those changes which happen in the structure of the communicative experience: all the features of human nature — “both beautiful and ugly” — are reflected in the process of intermediated communication [Kuznetsov 2011: 113–114].

The latter correlates with the approaches to the study of communicative experience in psychology, which were developed within the theory of activity [Lomov 1984; Lomov 1985] focused on the problem of subject activity [Rubinstein 2000]. The study of the category of experience is especially topical in the period of active social transformations because the habitual for a human scenario constructs break in the process of multiple changes. The scenario approach to the change in personal experience seems the most perspective for interdisciplinary consideration of the communicative experience issue. The situational scenarios are adopted by human being unconsciously, automatically in the process of socialization. The serendipity of the metaphor “life is the theater” is spoken about in the social psychology since the times of R. Harre [Harre 1979]. Later it was noticed that identity in its nature is dialogical [Hermans 2001]. Thus, practical developments of cross-cultural sensitivity principles demonstrated that the change of scenarios produces hard emotions including the refusal from communication [Rot, Kopteltseva 2001]. Inside the scenario a person follows not only socially approved norms but own interpretation of these norms (comp. with the principle of choosing “the cultural instrument” by L. S. Vygotsky [Vygotsky 1986; Vygotsky 1996]). So, the identification within the scenario may be considered as a variant of socialization. Under sharp changes a person longs to the positive identification anyway. If the preservation of positive modality is impossible, it starts the resistance of identity [Makhovskaya 2010]. The understanding of anomy is important here [Durkheim 2019], which is the feeling of loss, alienation, absence of significant links which a human feels in such circumstances. So, the duality in communication described in philosophical works reflecting upon the communicative experience of net communication is logically explained. The inner activity of a subject reveals itself in this way: new scenarios are always estimated from the view point of these criteria which are suggested to the subject by the previous experience of interaction (relativity of the experience to the past mentioned above).

The scenario approach in psychology is tightly connected to the study of dialogueness in linguistics and is supported with the theory of dialogueness by M. M. Bakhtin [Bakhtin 1979]. The general anthropocentrism inherent in modern science has been reflected in linguistics in the close attention paid to the study of speech behavior [Issers 2020]. At the same time, the focus of modern research is predictably shifted towards various forms of online communication, where various forms of speech behavior are crystallized (comp.: [Shmeleva 2024]). The scenario in psychological understanding is largely identical to the notion “communicative scenario” [Duskaeva 2012]. The interdisciplinary character carries the understanding about the normativeness of this scenario fulfilment. In linguistics it is reflected in the study of speech etiquette as a system of communicative rules, regulating the structure of communicative participants interaction [Duskaeva 2020]. That is how the research group of media linguists from various Slavic countries studied the typical communicative scenarios performed in online communities of various types [Duskaeva 2021]. It was noticed that the presentation about full freedom of participants in communication during online interaction which was the leading one on the first stage of studying the communication in the Internet environment is wrong. The speech behavior in net communication is regulated with the system of ethic norms determined by the participants of communication and making the etiquette line for communicative scenarios fulfilment. Being in a new situation during both online and offline communication the communicator checks his existing communicative experience and either incorporates into etiquette line or violates the formed etiquette norm (this makes it possible to study the grammatical structure of online communication: [Vyrovtseva, Malyshev, 2020]). The ignorance of rules is without prejudice: other participants react to the non-etiquette speech behavior and put all the efforts to return the communication into the frames of formed etiquette line — sanity happens. Thus the ambivalence of philosophical researches is performed from the linguistic view point. All the mentioned is especially topical for popular science communication, naturally existing in the situation of competitiveness and disputability [Duskaeva, Ivanova, Puyu 2024].

It is important to notice that psychology perfectly describes variants of personal reaction on changes in the surrounding environment if the previous experience does not coincide with the present situation: 1) regression — return to the previous samples of behavior [Kolesov 2013; Sevostyanov 2023]; 2) displacement — deletion of something negative for consciousness [Spielberger 1972]; 3) reconstruction — an attempt to transform the construction in such a way that it stops conflicting with the reality [Rubinstein 2000; Klochko, Krasnoryadtseva, Balanev 2016]; 4) dramatization — exaggeration of negative consequences 5) assimilation — acquiring of new experience with the support on existing and formed mechanisms of behavior [Dodonov 2006], etc. In his desire to overcome anomy a human being chooses the protective mechanism which is more relevant to his personal experience. It should be noted that linguists have repeatedly noted the extreme expressiveness, emotionality, and evaluativity of responses in online communication [Shcheglova 2019; Shmeleva 2023]. When studying the influence of volume and quality of communicative experience of communicators on the formation of etiquette line, the combination of understandings in philosophy, psychology and linguistics seems perspective.

Research methods

The empirical base consists of discursive fragments from popular science media communication. The authors focused on new media presented on various communication platforms: Telegram, VKontakte, YouTube, and LiveJournal. Popular science channels of various thematic focus were monitored over the past five years. More than 200 texts were collected, which became stimulus responses for subsequent objections. The chains of reactions of the objecting subjects were analyzed. The authors’ main focus was on objections based on fundamental disagreement, rather than on content. The article examines the most typical scenarios of an incompetent speaker’s objection in response to a stimulus remark by a specialist author.

A. P. Skovorodnikov and G. A. Kopnina determine the cultural and speech competence a “the combination of knowledge, abilities and skills which provide the effective speech communication in all the main spheres of human activity” [Skovorodnikov, Kopnina 2014: 262]. The main basic competences are: 1) orthologous, 2) stylistic, 3) ethic norm. According to this concept we may distinguish main reaction utterances of commenting subjects in online communication: address to the supposed or real violation of language norm, appeal to the stylistic discrepancy of utterance-stimulus, objection against ethic and speech aspect of utterance-stimulus. Besides, in speech practice of online communication one may clearly define the position of a commentator aimed to completely destroy the value of the utterance-stimulus and, as a consequence, the authority of the speaker, which is trolling.

The mentioned classification lies in the foundation of the empiric material analysis of the given research performed according to the traditions of media linguistic researches. It is used linguistic, linguistic-discursive, and semantic methods of study. The collected empirical base is considered from the standpoint of praxeology. This makes the value aspect of communication in the field of popular science discourse more relevant.

Analysis of material

According to various levels of the addressee’s competence he may demonstrate various ways of expression to the message: beginning with formal objections to the addresser’s literacy, and then it is clear that the content passes by the recipient’s consciousness; and ending with the objections to relatively ethic forms of information presentation — message propriety.

The very character of objection correlates with the levels of speech person development. The first level of speech skills mastering is orthologous, that is the language bearer demonstrates the combination of language competence skills. Depreciation of communication — objection is performed from the position of discrepancy to recipient’s expectations from the formal, orthologous view point.

From this view point the discussion over “The Russian Dictionary of Corona Virus Epoch” [Priyomysheva 2021] is illustrative. The dictionary itself due to the specifics of representative material brought to life multiple disputes, often the objection was concerned not with the scientific project itself, but the justification of its existence. Particularly, when discussing the dictionary on the resource LearnOff, the objection concerned the title of the lexical graphic project:

Linguists who do not know that there are only two Russian connecting vowels: O and E¹.

The author of the cited message judges the project from the position of an ordinary man, who mostly thinks about the formal conformance to the orthographic norm, not the content, and expresses the opinion which is not competent enough: the word coronavirusny (corona virus, adj.) is incorrectly written which automatically challenges the competence of the dictionary’s authors. Such utterances testify the superficial perception of the utterances-stimulus, incomplete understanding of the discussion content. Thus the misunderstanding of the discussion provokes the speaker to make judgements of “you are fool” type to protect the opinion about own competence. We notice the certainty of judgements which has no foundation. Mockery is formed as a general negative assessment of the professional community (linguists, in this case) which seemingly has no competence but demonstrates itself as a valid source of message. Formal mockery in the speaker’s eye seems significant and solid though people who understand the issue under discussion do not comprehend it all.

Such objections actualize ironical motives which are aimed to show the subject of objection in a negative light:

It is especially funny that this super wise edition contains the words “illness” and “vaccine”. As if there were no such words in the Russian language before covid.

The dictionary contains the mentioned words because they are the part of language reality perception of the relevant epoch and were specified in their lexical meaning according to the development of social situation which brought the project fulfilment to life. In his utterance the author of the message ironically outlines the words with the positive assessing connotations (super wise edition), the absurdness of the objection is determined with its subject: wrong words are included — though if to better understand the content aspect of the discussed project, then there is no need for this objection.

The subject of communication who do not understand the meaning of communication and expresses disagreement with the utterance-stimulus, addresses to the formal side of the utterance to demonstrate his involvement in the communication. Often such examples of objections are absurd due to the speaker’s ignorance of the speech subject.

A little different but not necessarily correct way of objection is connected with the comprehension of stylistic norm (the second level of communicative and speech competence): the objecting subject seemingly agrees with the general meaning of the utterancestimulus, but objects to the form of the material presentation. The subject of objection is still not the content of the utterance but single words producing the negative attitude of the recipient. Consider the example:

Why does our BRAIN LAG? Cognitive corruption

The edition is wonderful! But the title… The word “lag” in its contemporary meaning came from the English word combination lag delay, meaning “delay” of the data, transmitted in the net. So, lag means delay. The verb “glitch” would be much better, besides it is in big definition dictionary and has the meaning “to malfunction (about computer programs, computers)”. Linguistics is the science indeed².

In this case the author of the comment gives a general positive assessment to the podcast issue, but disagrees with the choice of the word which is used for the main topic: “lag/glitch”. The words are synonymous, and in the context of his consideration the author of the utterance-stimulus may choose the variant which is closer, but the author of the comment makes the difference referring to lexical graphic sources though the change of the word does not influence the meaning of the discussion. The content of the objection carries some indulgence towards the addressee, it may be noticed through concessive meaning of some constructions in the text of the comment (for example, see “Linguistics is the science indeed”). On the whole there is a feeling of notation, a moral which has a minimum of information but represents itself as the method to claim about himself and his position of disagreement. Adding the mentioned above it is necessary to notice that the author of the message speaking about the wrong choice of the word might check his message for language norms because it is funny to observe the phrase about lexical literacy with serious language violations.

Such comments are widely spread and stylistically identical. The objection is addressed to the form of thought, but not its existence:

Somehow too much expression in the message. Too much. And yet some words are not necessary³.

As we may see in this example, the author of the comment is not concerned with the content part of the utterance-stimulus but negatively characterizes the form of the message. Also, we may notice the absence of specificities in the objection which is marked with indefinite pronouns (somehow, some) that point at the presence of disturbing for the commentator factors but do not lead to certain samples. Such objections may be perceived as a desire to simply mark the position, and it is not important how significant and valuable it is for surrounding people. It is difficult to answer such an utterance due to the absence of certain objections, and the absence of the answer produces the illusion of a victory in the dispute which did not take place though.

Often, as it was mentioned above, such objections include unjustified generalizations and accuses of professional competence, not even single representatives of the profession, but the whole professional community which is certainly unjustified, because it is hard to make conclusion about the activity of the professional community on the whole based on a single phrase. From here we may notice general nominations (for example, “philologists”) with negative implication which is seen through auxiliary aids (such as personal and demonstrative pronouns, producing the effect of suspension, distance, stressed noninvolvement of the speaker to the professional activity):

You do not like the Great and Mighty. With you, philologists, every word in Russian comes from Greek, or Turkish, or Latin. Can a big language grow from a small one? Our language is the predecessor of other languages. The Russian language is full of images. Letters here are with meanings and the words are the same. But you see only empty phonemes there, you hear nothing, though this language is your mother tongue…4

The quoted sample continues the line of extrapolation of a single post assessment over the activity of the professional community on the whole (with you, philologists etc.). The comment itself possesses patriotic, not linguistic value because it reflects the author’s pride for the Russian language. But the objection is quite formal, it is built on a fake contradiction between the love of philologists to the Russian language and the understanding of etymology of words comprising the language.

The third level of communicative and speech competence is connected with the understanding of ethic and communicative norms, norms of speech culture, i.e. the communicant assesses the utterance according to propriety in a communicative situation where the utterance sounds. This level of norm possession also means the possibility of objection and it will carry a principally different character. This is the assessment of stylistic correctness of the utterance, correspondence of objecting person’s understanding about the character of speech interaction in certain conditions:

It is not clear from politically correct phrases of the presenter, which exactly groups of people are guilty of “everything is incorrect, unproductive, a waste of resources”⁵.

The cited example demonstrates a sample of the so-called returned word: as the podcast speaks about political correctness, the author of the comment uses the word “politically correct” against the presenter. The word acquires the ironical implication and reflects contemptuous attitude of the writer to the podcast edition. The commentator is worried about the form of the material and the content: it was left uncertain due to the form. So, the comment stresses the discrepancy of the chosen speech embodiment for the podcast content.

Such an objection against the form of the content may be observed in the following example as well:

where do they teach such a manner of presenting? as a presenter of thrash news⁶.

Sharp rejection is expressed through the negative characteristic of speech manner in information. The author of the blog addresses to the journalist manner of news presentation, which possibly may produce the effect of violation of expectations which allows establishing an additional contact with listeners, but the comment testifies the communicative failure. This discrepancy between the form of news presentation and the communicative situation produces the commentator’s disapproval. The focus shifts from the content of the presentation to the manner of speech and the comment reveals the disagreement with the communicative and speech competence of the author:

The idea of the video, as they say, is good, but the realization — the scenario is shit, the actor’s play is nothing. The character of the Witcher is badly expressed, no plot at all, 20 min. of pure lecture during which the witcher asks obvious questions and seemingly seeks for vanished letters of the Russian alphabet, though in reality he seeks nothing because, as I have said, there is no plot at all. In spite of an interesting topic the video is shit, but according to likes — folks grab it, so it means it’s ok⁷.

In such comments the writer often does not doubt to use expressions with colloquial vocabulary, mentioning personalities. Again the complaint is expressed not to the content of the utterance-stimulus, but to the form, presentation of this content. This objection is for objection, to mark his presence in the communication. The arguments and logic of the objection are not important, the center of the objection is the existence of the text. This excludes the constructive speech interaction, though it is widely spread in contemporary social nets.

Often such expressions contain trolling. This speech behavior may be called regressive because it is characterized with the subject’s desire to express the discrepancy between his communicative experience and the reality of popular science text. The speaker is driven with the principle of the fox from the fable “Fox and Grapes”: the text is not clear/ not interesting/does not fit because the text is bad and the author is bad too, but not the objecting person. The person expresses his position in this case using rude, vulgar, irrelevant for the discourse speech means. We may say that there is a typical for regression shift to more primitive variants of speech behavior.

For example, after explaining the punctuation rules in the channel “Critical corrector”⁸, there appeared a line of comments:

Gott, again I choose my favourite smile “mind blowing”.

As we may see in the example, the commentator does not make any efforts to prove his emotional expression according to orthologous, ethic or stylistic norm. The main communicative task of the comment is to claim that “everything is bad” and “the author disagrees”. That is why we notice the ironic mistake in the orthography of the interjection “God!” and the address to the background knowledge of the net users — the conventional name of one of the smiles “mind blowing”. The task of this comment is to provoke the aggressive exchange of utterances and to defend own positions by the participants of the discussion without the constructive approach to the dialogue aimed at the search of agreement. This is a classic example of trolling described in many scientific works (for example, [Duskaeva, Konyaeva 2017]).

The readers of the blog “Philolog of all Russia” react in the same way. For example, after the story about the etymology of the word “dermatologist”:

The topic of shit is not clear. No credit⁹.

This example demonstrates the attempt of a primitive language play: the commentator plays with the sound similarity of the Latin word derma and the rude colloquial Russian word dermo (shit). Syntactically the objection is formed as a virus comment “the topic X is not clear” where X is replaced with a nomination far from the scientific discourse. Due to the associative links and appeals to the aperceptive base the author himself considers his utterance witty though its communicative significance is zero and the only thing it may produce is the exchange of offensive phrases.

Conclusions

Based upon the given analysis we may draw the following conclusions:

1) most objections in the field of popular science discourse do not help building the constructive dialogue though the communicative situation means this development of the dialogue line;

2) as a rule, the reason for this is insufficient competence of the objecting person in the sphere where he leaves a comment, that is why the discussion shifts from the field of content to the field of objection producing complaints about orthologous, stylistic and ethic sides of communication;

3) the choice of one of the determined lines for objection leads, according to the speaker’s opinion, to the formation of presentation about him as a competent and witty communicator;

4) in fact, all these lines of objection lead to trolling as an extreme form of expressing the disagreement without possibility of objection to the point, the communicative significance of answering utterances contains only the claim “I am here, I am reading, I disagree”.